Copyright: Greg Palast
“The people who once upon a time bestowed military commands,
high civil offices, legions, and everything else, now restrains itself,
and instead, eagerly hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.”
—Juvenal, the Tenth Satire
Roman autocrats kept their people complacent and politically inactive with free food and violent performances in the Roman Colosseum. Would-be dictator Donald Trump distracts the American people by flooding the media with insults, disinformation and outright lies.
His tactics mimic Russian president Vladimir Putin, creating a fake world of outrage. Both Trump and Putin make it nearly impossible to determine what is false or what is real. They control the sources of information to control their people.
“Like any seasoned illusionist,” Andrew Mitrovica writes in Al Jazeera, “[Trump] appreciates how to draw the public’s eye and ear away from what demands scrutiny.” Mitrovica adds:
Trump grasps that in the digital age, outrage is oxygen. By provoking conflict and controversy at a relentless pace, he controls the focus and tempo of public discourse. What Trump wields is far more practiced and pernicious. He doesn’t just distract – he rewrites the story in real time, making the serious seem trivial, and the trivial seem epochal. Oh, and he figured out long ago that most political observers are far more captivated by personality than policy.
Trump also recognizes that the presidency isn’t only about power. It’s about stagecraft. He is not preoccupied by nuance or accountability. He revels in spectacle. And the spectacle always wins out. As such, Trump continues to beguile and enthrall with his studied performances grounded, as they are, in the gravitational pull and intoxicating prestige of occupying the Oval Office.
Brian Ott, a rhetoric scholar at Missouri State University, writes in Newsweek that Trump is a “master of misdirection. Quite simply, no president in the modern era has been more successful at shaping and manipulating the news cycle than Donald Trump.” Ott adds that Trump “does not have policies (or even a basic understanding of issues.) He says and does whatever he thinks and feels. The only political calculation being made is that everything Trump says will resonate with enough of his followers to work in his favor.”
In a May article in Salon, Chauncey DeVega quotes Lee McIntyre, author of On Disinformation: How to Fight for Truth and Protect Democracy. “I think one message people get from disinformation,” McIntyre told DeVega, “is that everyone is biased, and that all speech is political. Or that things are so confusing — and there are so many voices out there who disagree — that it's just impossible to know the truth. People become confused and then cynical. They begin to feel helpless. And that is precisely the type of person that an authoritarian wants you to be.”
In a February column in the New York Times, Ezra Klein writes that for Trump, “the flood is the point. The overwhelm is the point.” Klein adds:
The message wasn’t in any one executive order or announcement. It was in the cumulative effect of all of them. The sense that this is Trump’s country now. This is his government now. It follows his will. It does what he wants. If Trump tells the state to stop spending money, the money stops. If he says that birthright citizenship is over, it’s over. Trump knows the power of marketing. If you make people believe something is true, you make it likelier that it becomes true…
Focus is the fundamental substance of democracy. It is particularly the substance of opposition. People largely learn of what the government is doing through the media — be it mainstream media or social media. If you overwhelm the media — if you give it too many places it needs to look, all at once, if you keep it moving from one thing to the next — no coherent opposition can emerge. It is hard to even think coherently.
It's crucial for journalists to focus on substance, not stunts, Mitrovica notes. “The fourth estate can and must stop mistaking the fireworks for the fire...The antidote to manipulation is not detachment – it’s sharp, vigilant coverage of the profound, human consequences of the president’s actions, not his antics.”
Readers and viewers need to explore a wide variety of media sources and support those sources that focus on the truth behind the facts, not the circus.
Sources:
“How Trump makes us miss the real story,” Andrew Mitrovica, Al Jazeera, June 6, 2025
“Don’t Believe Him,” Ezra Klein, New York Times, Feb. 2, 2025
“Trump’s distraction machine is working, Chauncey DeVega, Salon, May 27, 2025
“Trump’s Racist Rhetoric: Impulsive or Calculated?,” Brian Ott, Newsweek, August 2, 2019